2016 August

The Rio Grande del Norte National Monument

by

By Anthony Guerrero

In March 2013, President Barack Obama, using executive authority under the Antiquities Act, designated 242,000 acres in Taos, New Mexico, as public lands. This area became a national monument known as the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument. As a result, the land, its rich Hispanic and Native American heritage and the wildlife habitat are protected and preserved. The monument ends right at the Colorado and New Mexico border. Some citizens in Colorado believe this designation should be expanded to include a portion of the San Luis Valley.

Read more

A Matter of Time

by

By Hal Walter

I was running with Teddy the Junkyard Jack down Music Pass in preparation for the upcoming pack-burro races when I first saw the smoke from the Hayden Pass fire. I knew at once these were not cumulus clouds with their billowing heads, amber undersides and dull rainbows in the folds.
I had failed to reach the top of Music Pass that Sunday, not due to anything physical but rather because of time constraints so common to the steel-jaw trap of family life. The summit would have to wait for another day.
From this vantage at the south end of the Wet Mountain Valley I could not get a pinpoint on the fire, only that it was somewhere in the range north of Westcliffe. Judging from the height of the smoke I figured it was mid-altitude on the range, and large.
I watched the smoke boil and fan eastward with the afternoon wind as I changed out of running clothes. Then I began driving toward town, where I could clearly see the fire was in the Coaldale area.
Back home, the edge of the smoke towered overhead, with a breeze cleaning the air at ground level. I knew this would change.

Read more

Air Power – Fighting Wildfires from the Sky

by

By Ron Sering

Prior to the end of World War II, planes were deployed to wildfires as spotters. At the end of the war, with a good supply of surplus bombers, many were quickly deployed as air tankers, dropping water and chemical retardant to support the ground crews.
Helicopters are used as well, to make more precise drops on fire location. The Salida airport is a service stop for the several helicopters supporting ground efforts with the Hayden Pass Fire.

Read more

The Way We Really Were

by

By Virginia McConnell Simmons Model T’s needed gasoline, frequent repairs and replacement of ruined tires and inner tubes, so in 1911 Salida’s Arkansas Valley Garage Men’s Association undertook promoting tourism. The Rainbow Route soon followed the Arkansas River from near Cañon City to Salida, but a trip to Gunnison required crossing Poncha Pass to Saguache …

Read more

Down on the Ground in Colorado

by

By George Sibley

I’ve been trying to figure out Colorado. I’m always a little irritated when I’m driving through the Upper Arkansas Valley, on my way to the Upper Gunnison, and I see one of those signs: “Now this is Colorado.” Sez who? And is my Upper Gunnison also “really Colorado” even though it is somewhat different ecologically and economically from the Upper Ark? What is “real Colorado?”

Read more

Quillen’s Corner: When Words Are Not Enough, Fair Play Might Save the Day

by

By Martha Quillen

What happens when catastrophe strikes and emotions are running so high that words are inadequate? People often gather at memorial services or disaster sites to express their sorrow. They light candles, leave tokens, say prayers, sing, cry and comfort one another. And for awhile, they feel as if they are one people, mourning together.
But that seldom lasts. Before long, citizens start clamoring for their government to do something. But they almost never agree on what. Investigate more people? Make arrests? Deploy the army? Detain dissidents and immigrants? Fortify the borders? Outlaw Islam? Exile foreigners? Torture someone?

Read more

John Mattingly: The War on Fire

by

By John Mattingly

Wildfires are not inspired by ISIS, but the war on fire and the war on terror share a few futilities. Fighting fire is somewhat like squaring off against the sun.
Sun, water and earth combine to form carbohydrates and sometimes nitrogenized carbohydrates (proteins), all of which burn through either combustion or metabolism in relatively short time spans. Simple carbohydrates, like leaves and vegetable matter, burn relatively quickly and usually within a year. More complex carbohydrates, lignins, like trees, have a longer calendar for burning, but a visit to any forest shows that at all times some of the lignin is being burned, if not by fire then by microbes and bigger creatures. If the full family of carbohydrates did not burn, the litter would make it very difficult to move about on the land surfaces of Earth, and lightning ignitions would be enormously hazardous to mammals. As it is, humans are working industriously on a positive feedback loop of carbon emissions that increase heat and carbon dioxide, that in turn increase heat and carbon dioxide and more forest fires.

Read more

The View From Home

by

By Steph Brady

On Sunday, July 10 around 3:30 p.m., I noticed we suddenly needed lights on in the house. I looked outside and thought, “there is a fire.” Usually you can see straight up the mountains. My husband Joe walked in and said “there’s a fire,” then the phone rang and it was my son-in-law saying “fire!” It was pretty surreal, yet very beautiful.
I believed it was Mother Nature’s way of culling the dead and the beetle kill. Joe and I hike up around Hayden Pass almost every day and had been seeing the brown trees for nearly three years. I had told him back in October we were going to have a forest fire.

Read more

The Real Deal Music Review: Harper Powell – Colors Of My Life

by

powellcd-cover_webBy Brian Rill

Harper Powell is a BMI songwriter from Salida, Colorado, who started singing not long after she began taking her first steps. This freshman solo CD, Colors Of My Life, is a respectable forty minute collection of folk-grass-inspired ditties. A strong bent of classic rock requires a second listen to appear clearly to the average listener. Like a young Alison Krauss, Harper marries the offbeat visionary style of Syd Barrett with the dark conceptualization of Grace Slick to beget a brand new but still retro-inspired musical statement.
Among highly traditional songs from the public domain like Dusty Miller and Hunting The Buffalo, Harper writes honest biographical verse on And I Want To Know, Colors Of My Life and Broken Now Flying. She sings with the softest courage of someone who laughs alone in a crowded room while reading a novel. Whether or not you understand her message, you definitely get the point. Emotionally vulnerable and a bit pensive, her persuasive voice echos in long drawn-out notes that festoon her acoustic guitar chords like floral arrangements among wicker garden gazebos.
Powerful yet humble, while remaining blissfully beautiful, Harper’s style yields to questions surrounding the innocence of flowers being born after a lightning storm. Dark and brooding held within limits of grace and strain she implores, “And I want to know, how can my heart be broken if no one ever tore it out of my chest? I’m on a steep mountain crest, lonely.” Deep introspective lyrics flow beside smooth steady guitar playing. A three-octave range delves deep into the cadence of her vocals riding the highest wave of sweet falsetto before cracking through into a repressed passionate rasp. “Maybe I’m missing something, maybe I skipped over a clue. Maybe a chunk is cut out, but by whom?”

Read more

Book Review: Lost Ghost Towns of Teller County

by

Reviewed by Forrest Whitman By Jan Mackell Collins History Press, 2016 ISBN 878.146713.512.2 This author has done a commendable job of researching the lost ghost towns around Cripple Creek and other Teller County locations. Her attention to detail is excellent. The book might entice one to try and find some of the sites, or what …

Read more

Barnes City – A Scam on Hayden Creek

by
Barnes City, circa 1904, at the northern end of Hayden Creek Pass. Photo courtesy of the Coaldale Community Schoolhouse.
Barnes City, circa 1904, at the northern end of Hayden Creek Pass. Photo courtesy of the Coaldale Community Schoolhouse.

By Mike Rosso, with help from Barb Snyder and the late Bill Parks.

The small mining town of Barnes City, formerly located off Hayden Creek Road near Coaldale, was reportedly named for an Englishman named Noah E. Barnes who came to the U.S. to strike it rich. He brought with him his wife and three grown children, one of whom, S.F.E. Barnes, was married at the property in 1904 and served as treasurer for his father’s corporation.

Read more

The Twin Lakes Schoolhouse

by
Photo by Stephen M. Voynick.
Photo by Stephen M. Voynick.

Demonstrating a “can-do” spirit.

By Linda La Rocca

A few years ago, the 1895 schoolhouse in Twin Lakes was little more than a reminder of the days when this southern Lake County village, nestled in a scenic glacial valley near two sparkling, sub-alpine lakes, was the hub of a small gold-silver-lead-zinc mining district and the main stop for freight wagons and passenger stagecoaches traveling the Leadville-to-Aspen route over 12,095-foot Independence Pass.

Read more

The Crowded Acre: Where’s the Beef?

by

By Jen Welch
I have built my business primarily around the growing of pigs and the production of pork. From the breeding board to the farrowing stall to the finishing paddock to the butcher to the fork, I do pork and I do it well. So it should come as no surprise that when I opened my food truck, pork would sit front and center on the menu. When customers ask me what they should try, I usually suggest the roasted pork street tacos – a recipe that is my dad’s and was the inspiration for opening a food truck in the first place. But not everyone is familiar with street tacos and empanadas and, on occasion, we get a customer who just wants a burger and fries. But I don’t have that on my menu, and I’ll tell you why.

Read more

by
Photo of the fire plume taken on July 10 at 7:20 p.m. looking east from Salida. Photo by P.T. Wood.
Photo of the fire plume taken on July 10 at 7:20 p.m. looking east from Salida. Photo by P.T. Wood.

By Mike Rosso

It was first reported by a San Luis Valley resident on Friday, July 8. Apparently a fierce lightning storm had been swirling around the Hayden Pass area, high in the Sangre De Cristo mountains. The witness observed a strike and then a plume of smoke rising from atop the pass.

Read more

A Brief History of Forest Fires in Central Colorado

by
A U.S.F.S. ranger inspects the Rainbow Trail after the Duckett Fire near Hillside in June 2011. Courtesy of www.inciweb.nwcg.gov
A U.S.F.S. ranger inspects the Rainbow Trail after the Duckett Fire near Hillside in June 2011. Courtesy of www.inciweb.nwcg.gov

By Ron Sering

The journal Science reports that fossil records in northern New Mexico show evidence of wildfires as far back as 200 million years. It’s part of the deal with living in the mountains, and an important part of its history.

Read more

From the Editor: Fire on the Mountain

by

By Mike Rosso

July 10 was a crystal clear, blue sky, Colorado day when my friend Julia and I decided to take a hike on the Colorado Trail up on Monarch Pass.
That same day, the temperature recorded at Denver International Airport hit 101 degrees, setting a record high for that date. But we were very contented with the comfortable 80 degrees the mountains afforded us. The forest floor was lush with flowers and undergrowth. Fooses Creek was running clear, cool and bright. You couldn’t really ask for a nicer day.

Read more

About the Cover Photograph

by
Firefighters in the Lake Creek area build a direct line just south of the Lake Creek Road on July 15, over to Rainbow Lake and up to the rock outcroppings. This is the last piece of basic hand line around the fire. Photo by Rob Powell.
Firefighters in the Lake Creek area build a direct line just south of the Lake Creek Road on July 15, over to Rainbow Lake and up to the rock outcroppings. This is the last piece of basic hand line around the fire. Photo by Rob Powell.

As of July 24, the Hayden Creek Fire is still burning and about 55 percent contained. The cover photo, taken from a helicopter by Rob Powell, Deputy Incident Commander for Rocky Mountain Incident Management Team Blue is of a ridge rim in the Sangre De Cristo Wilderness where the fire halted on July 13.

Read more